SRI LANKA: Humanitarian Crisis Building Up in Jaffna

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Aug 24 2006 (IPS) - With supplies cut off by two weeks of fierce fighting between Tamil rebels and the Sri Lankan armed forces, a massive humanitarian crisis is building up on the Jaffna peninsula according to the Red Cross and other voluntary agencies.

"We currently have two concerns which seriously need to be addressed. The first is that humanitarian workers do not have access to the conflict-affected areas due to which there is very little food and aid supplies reaching the refugees. The second is the security guarantee of aid workers," Peter Krakolinig, deputy head of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), told IPS.

"Threats and violence against aid organizations have made a bad humanitarian situation worse. Unless the government and the Tamil Tigers ensure such attacks stop, civilians in need will pay an unacceptably high price," Sam Zafrifi, Asia Research Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) was quoted as saying.

Half a million residents in the Jaffna peninsula were facing food shortages and unable to reach areas safe from the fighting, HRW said. It has also called for an international human rights monitoring mission to Sri Lanka under the United Nations to report on violations.

On Aug. 21, a local staffer with the ICRC was gunned down in the northern town of Vavuniya by unidentified gunmen, bringing the number of aid workers killed in August to 18. Seventeen were killed execution style in the eastern town of Muttur earlier in the month during clashes between the army and cadres from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tigers are formally known. Investigations are continuing into both incidents.

Though ICRC area officers said that they were not certain who was responsible for the latest murder and work was continuing unaffected, others in the capital said that security was a concern. The ICRC has called on the government and the Tigers to allow aid workers access into the affected areas.

A ship sailing under the Red Cross flag finally left the port of Colombo on Wednesday and is now headed for Jaffna with 1,500 metric tons of food and medicine provided by the Sri Lankan government and the World Food Programme (WFP).

&#39&#39The ship contains urgently needed relief to the displaced and resident population of the Jaffna peninsula," said Toon Vandenhove, ICRC delegation head in Colombo.

Both parties to the conflict have provided security guarantees for the ship and its cargo of food, medicines and sanitation kits. Close to eight percent of Sri Lanka&#39s 20 million population is ethnically Tamil and concentrated in northern Jaffna and in the east of the island.

Since renewed fighting broke out almost a fortnight ago, the peninsula has been cut off by land and sea, causing immense hardship to residents, already affected adversely by the conflict.

&#39&#39The ICRC hopes that access to Jaffna by humanitarian actors will be more regular in the coming weeks, should the current difficult situation on the ground prevail,&#39&#39 Vandenhove said. The ICRC maintains an office in Jaffna with 46 staff.

The Tigers have also given security guarantees for vessels that are being sent into Jaffna, symbolic capital of the Tamil ethnic minority, to ferry out aid workers and foreigners trapped by the fighting, including members of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which oversees a February 2002 ceasefire.

While the ceasefire is still operative, Sri Lanka has been sliding into increasing violence since last December and in the last two weeks close to 800 people were estimated to have died in fighting between government forces and Tamil Tigers – if figures cited by both sides are correct.

But the worst victims have been the civilian population caught in the fighting. By this week, 174,000 Sri Lankans had been made refugees due to the fighting, according to United Nations High Commission for Refugees office in Colombo.

Most are living in 42 temporary shelters spread across six districts in the north and east of the country where fighting has been raging since the beginning of the month. The situation has been worsened by security concerns and lack of access to the displaced by both local and foreign aid workers.

The recent wave of violence has pushed the ceasefire facilitated by Norway to the edge with truce monitors pulling out of conflict areas due to lack of security. The truce had temporarily halted warfare between government forces and the Tigers that has resulted in more than 65,000 deaths since the early 1980s.

The main access roads linking government areas with those under the Tigers were closed for several days last week and have only been opened intermittently.

Local curfew and power shortages, especially in Jaffna are having an impact. "Supplies are running short and the SLMM&#39s Jaffna District office has enough fuel and food for one week. Curfew has been imposed since the fighting started except for a few hours on some days and it is very difficult for the population to get supplies or move away from the conflict areas," the head of truce monitors, Ulf Henricsson, said in his weekly situation assessment.

Aid agencies have also warned that camps were becoming congested and that unless the fighting eases soon, the civilian situation would worsen.

The fighting has also forced thousands of refugees to flee to India. "From January to August around 7,500 have gone to India," V. Visvalingam, the government agent in northern Mannar District, from where many refugees embark, said. He said the unofficial number could be higher as many have been fleeing in secrecy after the government cracked down on boats taking refugees to southern India.

Visvalingam said that some refugees who fled to India, after the violence spread in the last fortnight, were originally from the east. "People from Trincomalee who only came here recently have now started to flee to India."